India Kitchen Congress

Preparing for ‘The Big Leap’

India Kitchen Congress TM is the annual meeting ground for professionals and entrepreneurs of the modular kitchen industry. It is a venue to meet manufacturers, dealers & franchisees, institutional buyers, designers and service providers, understand intricacies of the kitchen and cabinetry business, and learn new business concepts and skills.

IKC draws the most aggressive and innovative professionals of the industry as they vie for attention and partnerships. Through engaging presentations and panel discussions, these leaders inspire with their ideas and experiences, thereby nudging the industry towards growth.

Now in its 7th year, IKC enables attendees to build businesses that are scalable, sustainable and competitive.

The high point of IKC is the ‘CEO Round Table’. This powerful panel discussion brings together heads of some of the most admired companies for a heart-to-heart chat, as they discuss challenges and opportunities and share their experiences.

IKC helps the industry prepare for The Big Leap.

Why Invest in Kitchen Business

According to World Bank, India’s organised furniture industry is expected to grow 20% per annum over the next few years and is projected to cross US$ 32 billion by 2019. Further, Redseer Consulting report states that by 2020, India’s furniture industry is expected to grow to $35 billion. Kitchen is estimated to account for 10% of the furniture industry.

There is an uptick in the affordable housing sector—both from supply and demand side—implying that it would be a key driver for the residential sector in coming times. With the government nod of infrastructure status to affordable housing in Union Budget 2017-18, this sector is expected to grow at a high pace.

Affordable and mid-income housing will continue to drive residential housing, both in metro and tier-II cities. There has been an uptick of almost 15-20% with preference for ready-to-move-in units owing to RERA and GST benefits; this augurs well for the kitchen industry.

New mall supply is set to touch 10 million sft in the top 7 Indian cities in 2019, and customer experience is set to completely transform the retail business. The demand for high-quality shopping experiences is also spreading to tier-II and III cities.

Over the past two years, India has managed to jump a significant 52 positions in ‘Ease of Doing Business’ rankings released by World Bank. This was primarily on account of improvement in 6 of the 10 categories assessed. Of these, dealing with construction permits showed a massive jump on back of government’s policy reforms.

India’s furniture and furnishings industry will need 11.3 million skilled workers by the year 2022, states an NSDC report. To this end, the Furniture & Fittings Skill Council (FFSC) has unfurled a raft of training programmes for meeting the demand for carpenters.